Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In relation to this matter, there are a lot of questions about this debate. As it stands, this has been listed on the Notice Paper in this chamber for the next three days. We, the opposition, on this side of the chamber assume that there will be a line of Labor speakers who will read the prepared talking points.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like you!

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like me! The government wants these three bills to be the only topic of substantive debate in this chamber over the next 72 hours. You may ask yourself why. I'll tell you why: they don't want this debate on this issue because, at the end of the day, we haven't even had the benefit of any substantive committee inquiry. There are three bills here all being debated together. The first bill, the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2023, establishes a new federal system of administrative review. The second bill, the Administrative Review Tribunal (Consequential and Transitional Provisions No. 1) Bill 2023, deals with the changes to 138 different Commonwealth acts—138. And the third bill, the Administrative Review Tribunal (Consequential and Transitional Provisions No. 2) Bill 2024, affects 110 different acts. The first two bills have not been the subject of any scrutiny worth the name. And the third has never been examined by a committee at all; the Law Council of Australia has never made submissions about it.

We have no idea whether these bills are fit for purpose. But we, on this side, are being asked to vote on them. And why? The answer is that they want this House, this week, to approve the transition of one of the largest case loads—if not the largest case load—of any Commonwealth review body we've ever seen, without any detailed examination of whether the transitional arrangements will work. And why? They want this House, this week, to approve this legislation that will require the expenditure of an unknown amount of money—potentially, hundreds of millions of dollars—in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, without knowing what the actual impact will be. And again we ask the question: why?

To an outsider observing it, it's baffling. So it's worth spending a few minutes explaining why the coalition is not prepared to simply wave this one through and endorse this legislation. At the outset, it's worth saying a few things about the coalition's position as to reform of the AAT. The coalition is not opposed, in principle, to reforms of the Australian system of administrative review, and we do recognise that there are areas where there is legitimate need for reform and improvements could be made. After all, the administrative tribunal is a body that provides a review of government decisions made under about 400 different pieces of Commonwealth legislation. By necessity, its remit is complex and wideranging. It reaches into virtually all portfolios and it deals with matters ranging from tariff concessions to FOI, veterans affairs and national security. That's why this is important.

We recognise that it is almost inevitable that, in a body with such a wideranging suite of responsibilities, over time reforms will be needed. We get that. But developments in the law, unforeseen factors affecting how administrative issues play out on the ground, new interactions between statutes and even simply the march of technology will all, over time, create and throw up new challenges and obstacles. They will require changes to the legislation. We should judge those changes on their merits, and they should be studied in detail.

The issue that we have today, as I have explained, is that we are simply not in a position where we're going to make a judgement call. As to what Labor wants to talk about: in case it wasn't clear, the fact is that this debate has been brought forward in a rush, to distract from things that the government doesn't want to talk about, because the government doesn't want to talk about the fact that, on their watch, families have been slugged with a nine per cent increase in the cost of groceries. Labor doesn't want to talk about the fact that we are experiencing two consecutive quarters of the slowest gross domestic product growth in almost 18 years, outside the pandemic. They don't want to talk about their paralysis in the face of a wave of youth crime. They don't want to talk about their inexcusable bungling and mismanagement of immigration detention, the release of violent criminals onto our streets and into our towns, and their extraordinary concession in the last week that they no longer have control of our migration system. They don't want to talk about the fact that energy prices have gone up more than $1,000 in some regions, despite their promise to reduce them by—what was that number again? That's right: $275.

Instead, we have a debate on legislation that has not been considered, and without the benefit of hearing or testing the evidence. You can't just simply sign off on this without knowing what it does and without having the confidence that it is fit for purpose, as I said earlier, especially when it affects so many laws across the statute book.

It would be an abrogation of our duty as legislators if we were simply to wave this through. We call on the government to allow proper committee inquiries before these bills go to a vote. If these bills do go to a vote this week, as the government apparently intends, let me simply say that the coalition will not rubber stamp the majority of these major changes to our legal system without scrutiny, and we will reserve our position in the Senate.

It's also worth saying a few words about the AAT and its members. Many of those will line up today and read out the approved talking points, without doubt parroting the government's dubious claim that as many as 85 people serving on the tribunal were associated with the coalition. It is a dubious claim made by the Labor-aligned Australia Institute which has been repeated on the apparent basis that—

Government members interjecting—

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're a little noisy over there, aren't they? Thanks, Deputy Speaker. It is a dubious claim made by the Labor-aligned Australia Institute which has been repeated on the apparent basis that saying it often enough will simply justify whatever the attorney wants to do. Importantly, it is not a claim about the performance of that body that I spoke about that the attorney now proposes to abolish. It is not a claim that about the qualifications of the people the Attorney-General will now be purging.

It may surprise people in this place to learn that almost half of the members who currently comprise the tribunal were appointed under the current government. The AAT publishes a list of its statutory appointments, and if you go through that list and sort it out by date, you'll discover that around 160 of the 340-odd members of the AAT were appointed by the current Attorney-General, Mr Dreyfus. All of these 160 will remain after the AAT is abolished. The remaining 180 are not guaranteed a spot. The people who are being targeted are either enrolled as legal practitioners of at least five years standing or have special knowledge or skills relevant to their duties.

As my colleague the member for Berowra has previously pointed out, among the people that the Attorney-General was targeting for purging are people with master's degrees from Ivy League and Oxbridge universities—people with doctorates in law, people with first-class honours and people who are university medallists. These include senior decorated military officers and others who have served in the Australian Defence Force, senior public servants, academics, barristers, partners in law and police officers with decades of experience. They include people who have served on tribunals at a state and territory level. As the member for Berowra has previously said, the people the Attorney-General wanted to target included public servants who headed up departments and agencies, including public servants who have received the public service medal for their work as a public servant. These include a former deputy registrar of a state supreme court, a former sex discrimination commissioner, the chair of the Australian Accounting Standards Board, and the editor of the legal service on practice and procedure for one of the state tribunals. We also acknowledge that there are members of the AAT who have served in parliament or who have served our country through parliamentary service in state or territory legislatures. In itself should not exclude a person from appointment where they are otherwise qualified. To the contrary: the service to our country through its parliament should be valued and should be respected.

It's also worth spending a few minutes addressing the central issue of the tribunal's performance. Ordinarily, when a government body is abolished, it is because there are performance issues that are so deeply entrenched that the only way to address them is to start from scratch. This is why the expense of abolishing and re-establishing the body is justified. It is difficult and certainly not credible to make those claims about the AAT. The last annual report tabled before the Attorney announced his attack on the AAT, the 2021-22 annual report, tells a story of a body meeting or exceeding its benchmarks.

Debate interrupted.